The World Turns 'Round
by scribblemyname
Summary: They pretend they aren't two of the loneliest people in the world. Rogue/Remy AU  formerly titled Lonely
1. Lonely

A/N: Random drabblery. It just _happened_, okay?

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><p>He pretends he hasn't been exiled from his wife for the last ten years. She pretends her husband hasn't been in a coma for the last seven.<p>

They pretend they aren't two of the loneliest people in the world.

She laughs over her Starbucks frappaccino. He smiles over his diner black.

If their eyes linger too long on each other's hands, eyes, and mouths, neither admits it. If his hand brushes her shoulder when he helps her out of her chair, neither comments. If they dance too close, too slow, and too long and wish this world wasn't pretend...

Well.


	2. Pretending

A/N: Blame this on **whipsy**. I wasn't expecting something this ouch.

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><p><em><em>Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order.<em>_

__~ Samuel Beckett ~__

Shut up, Samuel. Ah nevah asked your opinion.

But, girl, that's exactly what you've been doing.

Rogue tried to shrug it off and laid her head on Remy's shoulder. His hands tightened in response, and it felt so _good._Dance first. Think later. They'd been dancing for weeks now, and there was a part of her that was starting to wonder if she ought to be thinking.

Of course, voices in her head aside, that part of her had an external face and grumpy attitude, and his name was Logan.

_Darlin', I understand you're hurting and you're lonely, but you're playing with a man as lonely as you are. And when two lonely people forget the reason why they are, bad things usually happen._

Bad things like adultery, divorce, being the very kind of bad girl her mother always warned her not to be.

"Y' doin' okay?" Remy asked her quietly.

She nodded, held on a little tighter.

So what if Ah want ta pretend Ah can keep him? So what?

Bobby had been in a coma for years from the unexpected return of her powers. Belladonna had not even _seen_ Remy for longer. Who really _cared_ if they were both married?

Rogue cared. Somewhere. Somewhere where she wasn't pretending.

"Just keep dancin', sugah," she whispered, like a sigh.

She was grateful that Remy said nothing, just pretended he believed her and held her close.


	3. Awake

A/N: **whipsy** again. Prompting on LJ again.

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><p>It should have been the best news of her life. Instead Rogue stared at the phone, in a potent mix of fear and dread, trying desperately to comprehend what she was hearing.<p>

Bobby. _Awake._

"Thank ya. Ah'll be right down."

She felt like she was dreaming as she hung up the phone and turned around to face the other occupants of the kitchen. Logan was clearly able to read the shock on her face and trying to figure out what it meant. Storm looked concerned. And Remy...

Her thoughts faltered abruptly. "Bobby's awake," she said flatly and brushed past the students filtering in. She didn't exactly flee out of the kitchen, but she walked very briskly.

Upstairs was no better. None of her clothes were good enough. She could barely even _remember_ what Bobby used to like. She'd spent seven years becoming her own person again and to him, nothing but a single long night had passed.

This was supposed to be the best moment of her life. She couldn't breathe as she sat down on her discarded clothing choices in the middle of the floor, couldn't breathe, couldn't stop sobbing, not sure why nothing in the world would reconcile. This wasn't the best. Not even close.

What kind of a horrible person am Ah?

Bobby was her husband. Her _husband_. She should want to see him, hold him in her arms again, hear his quiet laughter, see the love shining in his eyes.

This was all her fault. She had put him in that coma, and she had failed to keep his memory alive. How could she stare into that faultless love and know she didn't love him back?


	4. Revolving

A/N: and **arliddian **finishes us out.

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><p><em>He falls in love without even trying, a mistake for sure, but he cannot bring himself to regret it. This is the year he has nowhere to go, the year he learns he is a mutant, and only the Professor's offer of a scholarship to a school for "gifted" students could hide the details from his anti-mutant parents.<em>

_Then he meets Rogue. She startles him. She's soft southern charm and shy laughter, still afraid of who she is, but he wants to love her and then he does. Never mind it's a mistake, he can't touch her, have her in all the ways that are supposed to matter._

_Never mind, he thinks, as he buys her gloves and she buys him shirts, as they pour sweet dreams and plans into each other's minds and hopes into each other's hearts and _love...

She was there when he woke up. He reached up to try to touch her, but with a sad smile, she caught his bare hand with her gloved one and shook her head, and suddenly he knew what had happened. Hadn't it been just yesterday he was knotting his tie at the mirror, a new one he thought she would like, when she touched him and he wondered why her eyes were suddenly blue?

Like his.

Like a revolving door in revolving days, passing through sleep and waking, through cures and gritted teeth, but this. _This._ I'll always be here, no matter where y'all have gone. I'll always be here waiting, speaking to that part of you I keep.

It had been years: he saw it in her face, her eyes, the many subtle ways she'd changed. It had been years and he had slept, knowing nothing about her life, her pains, while she had every part of him still awake.

We never write, we never write.

_"Rogue,"_ he whispered, tightened his hand over hers. "Rogue."

She smiled, pained and bittersweet, and held on tightly in return.


	5. Turning

A/N: and **arliddian **finishes us out.

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><p>He hadn't been there for so many of the things they had planned together. Did you see Alaska? <em>Were<em> you pregnant? Did you conquer your powers?

No, no, _no._ All pain and wounded answers, but trying to be brave.

Rogue rallied after a few moments, informed him breezily of all the things that _had_ happened while he slept. "The school is doing well, sugar. 'Ro's got 'bout two dozen teachers and aides and what-have-ya on staff, plus student jobs to pay for tuition. To say nothing of all the students.

"Logan and Hank joined forces and did some real lobbying to get official status for the X-Men, and we're not just a bunch of vigilantes anymore. We're considered an official peacekeeping body, and the Junior X-Men get credit for internship and training. Works out real well. Remy and I run the junior program." She faltered. Why in the _world_ had she said that?

Bobby seemed to miss her discomfort. "Remy? A new teacher?" he prodded, caught only on the unfamiliarity.

She nodded. "Yeah. He's paired with me a lot 'cause his mutation includes a forcefield. Hank says I can't absorb him."

Bobby paled, stumbled to speak, but couldn't find the words.

"Oh, sugar." She leaned over and kissed the top of his head, where she wouldn't absorb him. "We never tested it."

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><p>Logan was waiting for her when she got in the door to the mansion. She held up her hand to forestall his questions.<p>

"Not now," she told him. She really couldn't _take—_

But there was Remy, leaning his arms over the bannister and asking with all sincerity, "How is he?" Caring because _she_ cared, and she wasn't sure of anything, even that.

She fumbled for words and found them. "He's fahne, but the doctors say he'll need a lot of physical therapy before Ah can haul him home." She stopped, took a deep breath. "How would ya feel if ya were allowed to go back to New Orleans?"

He stared at her for a very long time. His face was unreadable, though he must have felt a hundred or more emotional gyrations at the very idea of having his family, having _Belle_ again.

Think first, Samuel, she thought bitterly. Think, then dance.

She knew that Remy wore his heart on his sleeve when he was in danger of losing something he wanted more than anything, but this was different and he wasn't, but he had never had her to lose. "I..." He blinked. "I don' know."

Weariness closed in. She nodded, began the long, weary walk upstairs to her, no _their_ room. "Neither do Ah."

When she was settling in, kicking off her shoes, trying not to weep, she realized that Logan was standing there the whole time she talked with Remy. She wondered if she really cared.

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><p>Night was always hardest. The voices in her head were soft, but they never went away, they never failed to have an opinion on all the things that had happened. She tried to ignore them and finally turned away and moved deeper into her own mindscape.<p>

No one she absorbed ever completely went away. He was here, somewhere, waiting for her.

It looks like their bedroom. He is lying beside her, studying her without anger from those beautiful, blue eyes.

She sighs and reaches out to take his hand, amazed and wondering that he lets her. This is _her_ Bobby, as he was when she absorbed him, as he is now.

"Ah'm sorry, love," she whispers and is surprised that she means it. "Ah just... don't know what to do."

He nods. "I know." Always so forgiving. You'd think that with the way she understands people, gets inside their heads so literally, she would be the forgiving one, but no, it's him. It's always been him.

"You have to let him go." It's only fair, only right.

She stares at him, realizing the ambiguity in that statement and asks blankly, "Which one?"


	6. Gently

A/N: and **arliddian **finishes us out.

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><p><em>She remembers her vows. She remembers dancing.<em>

Rogue found herself sliding out of bed at some point during the night, holding herself in the still moonlight, and swaying back and forth to a tune only her memories could hear.

_To have and to hold..._

She could never really let him go, not with her mutation being what it was, but to hold him? How could she if she could never touch him again.

_...for better or worse..._

This was supposed to be the best day of her life, the day her husband wakened out of sleep, the day her happiness was restored. But it _wasn't._ It wasn't better, it was worse, and that was covered in her vows too.

_...for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health..._

Rich in love, poor in love. Sick of heart, weak in body. G—, what was she going to do?

_'Til death do us part._

"Ah'm not dead," she whispered to the fading night. Ah'm not dead and neither are you.

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><p>"Do you still love Belladonna?"<p>

Remy had been pretty innocently getting ready for bed when she ambushed him in his room and asked him such a forthright question. He had kept his distance in a way he wouldn't have just yesterday, had put up those emotional walls he was so known for, had recognized the importance of the dynamic that had changed.

Perhaps that's why he seemed so bewildered when she spoke to him as openly as she had before, as if... Well.

He seemed to take a hold of himself, then quietly, "Why are you asking me that?"

Rogue took a breath, but shook her head. "Because it matters."

He stopped, tried to ferret out some _meaning_ from such a statement. "Y' don't..." He paused, shock dawning. _"Rogue."_

Her chin came up slightly. "Love is a _choice_, Remy."

The surprise smoothed off his face as if it had never been. He looked at her from that unreadable expression she realized she was coming to hate. "I'll always love her, chère." And there it was, something she had always known and pretended she hadn't.

This had never been about her.

"Bobby's going to need a lot of help with his recovery over the next few months. Ah won't have time to go out." It was an honest statement but devoid of any feeling. She couldn't afford to feel, so she cut it off when her heart threatened to speak.

He nodded, understanding. Yesterday, he might have touched her shoulder, comforted her with such a simple gesture, but even then, she had never felt his skin. _We never tested it._ She never would.

"In another life," he said after a long moment. Perhaps, she imagined that wistfulness to his voice.

A sad smile crept over her face. "You say it as though it's possible."

"Ah, chère." His voice was soft and full of meaning, and her breath caught, just barely. "The world turns 'round."

Knowing he did not expect a reply, she stepped away and closed the door softly, gently behind her.

#


End file.
